Bonnie Rose Marcus, poet, theater artist and Director of the Readings/Workshops Program at Poets & Writers, has presented her work at venues including ABC NO RIO, Cornelia Street Cafe and Playwrights Horizon. Published in Salon, Brooklyn and Miss Fit’s Free Press. A hospice volunteer, she facilitates meditation classes and completed a book of poems inspired by her hospice work.

ML Liebler is an internationally known & widely published Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist and arts organizer, and he is the author of 13 books, including the award-winning Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream. Liebler has taught English, American Studies, Labor Studies, Canadian Studies and World Literature at Wayne State University since 1980.

Zilka Joseph is Program Manager for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. Her poetry won her a Hopwood Award and a Pushcart nomination. Her chapbook, Lands I Live In, was nominated for a PEN America: Beyond Margins Award. She teaches in Ann Arbor and in Kolkata, India, has published widely in journals and her chapbook What Dread is forthcoming this summer.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the novel Once Upon a River. She was a 2009 National Book Award finalist and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for her collection of stories, American Salvage. Campbell is also the author of the novel Q Road and the story collection Women & Other Animals.

Scott Beal’s poems have appeared recently in Indiana Review, Dunes Review, The Legendary, and with Rachel McKibbens and Aracelis Girmay in Jangle the Threads. He earned his MFA in 1996 from the University of Michigan. Scott teaches poetry and fiction at the Neutral Zone teen center in Ann Arbor and 826michigan, and serves as Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School.

Jeff Kass teaches Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor and at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti and is the Literary Arts Director at the Neutral Zone teen center in Ann Arbor. He is the author of the chapbook poetry collection Invisible Staircase, the essay collection From the Front of the Room about teaching, and the short story collection Knuckleheads from Dzanc Books.

Poet and writer Keith Taylor coordinates the undergraduate program in creative writing at the University of Michigan and directs the Bear River Writers’ Conference. His work has appeared in such publications as Story, The Los Angeles Times, Alternative Press, The Southern Review and the Chicago Tribune. His next collection of poems, Marginalia for a Natural History, will be published in 2011 along with Ghost Writers, a collection of ghost stories co-edited with Laura Kasischke.

Laura Kasischke, critically-acclaimed novelist and poet has penned eight volumes of poetry and seven novels. Winner of numerous awards, Laura has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Two of Laura’s novels have spawned major motion pictures. Laura’s latest novel The Raising was published this year along with a new collection of poems, Space, in Chains.